The Model Is the Message

Title of Bratton and Agüera y Arcas's 2022 Noema essay on the Blake Lemoine episode, and the slogan Accept All Cookies makes of it (entry 39): the foundation model is "not just a repository of available human semiotics" but "a living and breathing engine for its generative amplification," which confuses anyone who takes it for representation or capture. Like earlier major transitions it changes not only how ideas are expressed but the intensity with which they are formed and form us. Entry 63 adds "the archive is the medium." The essay's own position is that the intelligence in LaMDA was not what Lemoine thought but not quite not it either; Bratton later says "we got it pretty well right."